San Diego case plays into Scout 'perversion files'

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This family photo provided by Tom Stewart shows him, right, and his younger brother Matt, left, in their scout uniforms. The brothers settled out-of-court after suing the Boy Scouts in 2003 for abuse they had suffered at the hands of one of their Scoutmasters. The Stewarts are angry that the Boy Scouts of America have fought to keep confidential thousands of files the organization has kept since the early 1900s on suspected pedophiles within their ranks. The Stewarts say releasing the files decades ago would have helped stop pedophiles. (AP Photo/Courtesy Tom Stewart)— AP

This family photo provided by Tom Stewart shows him, right, and his younger brother Matt, left, in their scout uniforms. The brothers settled out-of-court after suing the Boy Scouts in 2003 for abuse they had suffered at the hands of one of their Scoutmasters. The Stewarts are angry that the Boy Scouts of America have fought to keep confidential thousands of files the organization has kept since the early 1900s on suspected pedophiles within their ranks. The Stewarts say releasing the files decades ago would have helped stop pedophiles. (AP Photo/Courtesy Tom Stewart)
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An array of local authorities — police chiefs, prosecutors, pastors and Boy Scout leaders among them — quietly shielded scoutmasters and others who allegedly molested children, according to a newly opened trove of confidential files compiled from 1959 to1985.

At the time, those authorities justified their actions as necessary to protect the good name and good works of Scouting. But as detailed in 14,500 pages of secret “perversion files” released Thursday by order of the Oregon Supreme Court, their maneuvers protected suspected sexual predators while victims suffered in silence.

The files document sex abuse allegations across the country, from a small town in the Adirondacks to downtown Los Angeles.

One case showing an organization slow to act came in 1983, when scouting officials in Virginia attempted to confirm reports that volunteer Max C.W. Kelly had been convicted of child molestation while volunteering with the scouts in San Diego County in 1976.

The Virginia scouting officials wrote to San Diego executives in September 1983, but no reply is contained in the case file. They eventually expelled Kelly from the organization in August 1984.

“I regret that it has taken our council so long to act on this matter, but our Scouters wanted to be very careful and be certain that we had properly identified Mr. Kelly and that his behavior justified our investigation,” Randall E. Beaver, a Scout executive in Virginia, wrote to a national scouting official at one point during months of bureaucratic delays.

At a news conference Thursday, Portland attorney Kelly Clark blasted the Boy Scouts for their continuing legal battles to try to keep the files secret.

“You do not keep secrets hidden about dangers to children,” said Clark, who in 2010 won a landmark lawsuit against the Boy Scouts on behalf of a plaintiff who was molested by an assistant scoutmaster in the 1980s.

The new files are an incomplete window on documents the Boy Scouts of America began collecting soon after their founding in 1910. The files, kept at Boy Scout headquarters in Texas, consist of memos from local and national Scout executives, handwritten letters from victims and their parents and newspaper clippings about legal cases. The files contain details about proven molesters, but also unsubstantiated allegations.

The 1959-85 files show that on many occasions the files succeeded in keeping pedophiles out of Scouting leadership positions — the reason they were collected in the first place. But they document some troubling patterns.

In many instances — more than a third, according to the Scouts’ own count — police weren’t told about the alleged abuse.

And there is little mention in the files of concern for the welfare of Scouts who were allegedly abused by their leaders. There are numerous documents showing compassion for suspected abusers, who were often times sent to psychiatrists or pastors to get help.

In 1972, a Pennsylvania Scouting executive wrote a memo recommending a case against a suspected abuser be dropped with the words: “If it don’t stink, don’t stir it.”